


Enemies of our Own Making

by Zandra_Court



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zandra_Court/pseuds/Zandra_Court
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene from <i>Starsky vs. Hutch</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Enemies of our Own Making

_“When you loathe yourself, a true friend will respect your honesty. And if you’ve been fortunate in life, he will probably share your opinion.” ~ Benson Bruno_

 

It was after midnight when Hutch pulled his LTD in behind the Torino. There was plenty of space to park next to it in the driveway, but he didn’t want Starsky to be able to drive off if this went down bad. Not that there was much chance of it going down good. He’d royally fucked up and he knew it. For the last three hours, he’d driven around the California coastlands thinking about why he’d made such a disastrously bad choice; waffling between self-justification and self-loathing. All he knew for sure was he couldn’t make sense of it on his own. He needed Starsky’s help and that was not going to come easy.

Hutch walked slowly up the stairs, feeling very much the condemned man. At the door, he pulled out his key. No point in knocking. Starsk would just ignore him.

He put the key in, but the latch gave way without needing to use it. The door had been left unlocked, which made him a touch hopeful. At least, it meant his partner wasn’t trying to lock him out.

The darkness of the front room was broken by the porch light. He could see the silhouetted form sitting on the couch, his legs on the coffee table. Starsk wasn’t asleep: his head was upright. But he didn’t turn to look at Hutch either.

Hutch closed the front door and flipped on the room light, blinding them both.

“Turn it off.” Not a whisper, not a shout; just a command. Hutch turned the lights back off, not moving from the door.

“I don’t want to talk to you in the dark. How about if you hit the lamp or…or I could turn on the stove light.” Hutch started to walk behind the couch towards the kitchen.

“No.” 

Barely contained rage simmered in his partner’s voice and Hutch froze mid-step. 

“I know you’re gonna talk at me Hutch. I can’t stop it. But I don’t plan on lookin’ at you when you do. Say what you feel you have to and get out.”

Silence hung in the air for a very long minute. Finally, Hutch sat down on the couch next to his partner. He turned his body towards the very still form, his knee touching Starsky’s thigh. He hadn’t meant to touch him exactly, but was glad to have the contact. The other man made no movement, towards or away, but remained deadly still. Hutch couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing.

“Starsk, I didn’t go over there to---I mean, I hadn’t planned to end up that way.”

“Shut up.”

“What?”

“If all you’re gonna do is try to explain or rationalize or justify or in any way defend yourself, get the hell out or, I swear, I will break your jaw.”

There was no doubt in his mind that Starsky could do just that. Honestly, he deserved it. Part of him wanted it. If Starsky would vent his rage, punish him, that would help make them square. It wouldn’t heal them though, and Hutch wanted that more than anything else.

“I’m sorry.” _Shit, that sounded lame._ “I’m unbelievably fucking sorry. I know you’re hurt and angry and feeling betrayed. That's all my fault.” _Well, not entirely all._ Kira had a pretty big part in this, but saying so wasn’t going to help matters right now.

“OK. You’re sorry. Get out now.”

“No Starsky. No. I can’t. I’m not gonna give you reasons. But I have to talk to you, whether you like it or not.”

Silence once again took over. Hutch could hear the ticking of Starsky’s watch. Tick…tick…tick….

“She was playing us Starsk. And when you get like you were yesterday morning… When you get like that with a girl, your common sense, your cop sense, goes out the window. That’s bad for both of us.”

“Don’t you dare try to…You goin’ over there had nothing to do with you being worried about me backin’ you up!”

“No, that’s not… Fuck! Look, that didn’t come out right. I mean that I knew you were falling hard for her and when you fall like that, you don’t exactly think critically about things. Just two days ago she implied she was in love with me! I had to know which of us she was lying to.”

Again, silent stillness was all he got. He was starting to see that as permission to continue, so he kept talking

“I hadn’t expected her to be lying to both of us. Thing is, she wasn’t lying to herself. I think th-th-that she felt she wanted to have us both and could make that happen by saying she loved us. She seemed surprised that we wouldn’t be OK with it.”

“You were.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were! If I hadn’t shown up, you two would have just continued on, hiding…cheating.”

“No! I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Starsky gave a tired kind of laugh and shook his head, looking down into his lap. “Hutch, you really that delusional? You already did it.”

“I’m not delusional. I betrayed you in a way I never thought I could and it makes me literally sick. I’ve been doing nothing but thinking about why I would do such an awful thing to you. The only thing that I keep coming back to is that somehow, I knew you’d show up. I knew you’d find us.”

There was enough light coming in through windows and the glass panel on the front door for him to see that Starsky was looking at him now, but not enough to be able to read his partner’s face or to look into his eyes.

“Please, Starsk, can we turn on a lamp or something?”

“You wanted me to find you like that? Why?” The hurt in his partner’s voice was almost too much to take.

“I---I think so you would know that Kira wasn’t being straight with you. And I think… Because I wanted you to hate me as much as I hate myself.”

Hutch turned away and put a hand to his face. He heard a click and the table lamp cast its soft light around the room. He glanced over, seeing a mixture of anger, hurt and confusion battling for supremacy on his partner’s face.

“That makes no sense. Why would you hate yourself?”

“Because yesterday morning, I realized I was playing a game you weren’t. We’ve chased after the same girl before, but never after anyone who mattered. You and Kira were over. Even with that, I’ve never gone after someone when you got there first. It started out being another way to bug you and then it got away from me and I was lost in her. When I slept with her, I couldn’t shake that you’d been there first. I kept going back to her, thinking the feeling might go away. It didn’t. And once you told me that you loved her, and that she’d told you she loved you, well, I loathed that I’d gotten mixed up with her. Worse, I’d played fast and loose with us.”

“That don’t line up. If you were feelin’ so God-awful over fuckin’ her, why’d you do it again?”

“What possible punishment could I inflict on myself that would be as bad as losing you?”

Starsky just stared at him in more silence. This time, Hutch didn’t fill it, letting it hang over him like a guillotine. After several minutes, Starsky finally spoke. 

“You really are a dumb blond.” Hutch felt a huge sense of relief at hearing his best friend insult him in such a familiar way.

“Yeah. I also know you’re not sitting here in the dark, staring at the wall because of her.”

Starsky sighed. “There ain’t no one in the world that can make me hurt like you can Blintz. Ain’t no one else that can make me feel better, though, either.” Starsky laid his arm along the back of the couch, lightly fingering the base of Hutch’s neck.

“I really am sorry. It all went bad so fast.” Hutch looked full into those blue eyes that he trusted so much, guilt still twisting in his gut from his betrayal, but relishing the forgiveness that flowed from Starsky’s touch.

“Not like you didn’t have help.”

“Yeah. I wish she knew the kind of damage she caused.”

“I don’t know Hutch. I think it would be worse for her to know the kind of damage she couldn’t cause.”

“Huh?”

“Shuddup. I’ve got a plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to SPowell for her inspiration and help.


End file.
